Windows only: The New York Times Reader lets you download full editions of the NYT to your desktop where you can browse the contents offline in a very familiar newsprint format.

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On installation, the NYT Reader also installs Microsoft .NET 3.0, which is a little weird - this is the first app I've installed requiring .NET 3.0, and it takes forever. Once you fire up the Reader, it goes through the long process of downloading all of the content section by section.

Downloading the content really does take some time. In fact, I took every screenshot in the gallery before the reader had download even half of the content. Luckily you needn't wait for these downloads every day, since, like any good newsreader, the NYT Reader has options for continuous syncing. You can sync at intervals or just choose a once-daily sync so that the paper is ready for you every morning with your coffee.

When your paper finally does download, life is good. The plus side of all this downloading is that the entire paper is on your computer, with individual articles saved as mysterious .nyt files that you can open in your Reader (this means a desktop search app could help you find articles you've downloaded). Once I stumbled onto the .nyt files, the extravagantly long download time made more sense, since it seems the NYT Reader had downloaded 12 days worth of news.

Overall the layout and interface of the NYT Reader is very nice, and if you're one of those people who misses the look and feel of the Times when you're reading it in your traditional newsreader or through their web site, or you need to read content when you're offline, the NYT Reader looks like a pretty good choice. The app is freeware, Windows only, and requires a free registration with NYT (or BugMeNot).